Let’s pile on more evidence that the NFL has gone pass-happy the past 30 years. Here is a rundown of every season’s total passing yards across the league and, for greater accuracy, the average passing yards per game – since 1932.

You need the latter to account for the increase in the number of active teams over time. Back in 1932, there were only eight teams who combined for just over 5,000 yards. Tom Brady (twice), Drew Brees (twice) and Dan Marino have each thrown for 5,000 yards in a single season by themselves.

Last season, the NFL’s 32 teams combined for over 118,000 passing yards, the most ever.

Since about 1980, the NFL has seen an explosion in passing. 1981 was the first year the league averaged over 200 yards thrown a game. It’s been par for the course 28 of the last 32 seasons now and each of the last 20, regardless of how many teams in the league.

The average number of passing yards per game has also increased steadily the last five years in a row.

Where will 2013 fit into this paradigm? We’ll come back at the end of the season and see how it “passed.” In the meantime, you can see this season’s passing yardage totals here at my source, pro-football-reference.com.